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Back to Moonfall

Some of you might remember my "Moonfall" map from a few months ago as my first 'proper' world map. Now, real life does come up with the strangest coincidences. I work at a really intellectually unchallenging position. So unchallenging, in fact, that I've become somewhat afraid that if I do not force my mind to work on non-work related topics I'm going to end up with brain rot some time in the future. All of you who tend to make their money working menial tasks: you know how it is.

Anyway, I colleague of mine shares my pen & paper hobby, and to stave off our eventual mental desintegration ( ) we decided to create our own home-brewn RPG system, rules and setting and all. And what does a setting need? Right, a map. So I've been taking the ideas thrown around in the original Moonfall threads here and on DeviantArt to flesh out Moonfall as a post-apocalyptic, post-transhuman, DnD-meets-Steampunk-meets-Cyberpunk-meets-horrible abominations on Mars setting.

What I've done so far is finetuning the shape of the landmass to take it away a bit from the original map through changing, if ever so slightly, the coastlines, adding islands, placing new rivers directly into the landmass rather than painting them on it and adding a large number of cliffs and Arizona-desert like locales.

The central San Andreas fault-like rift was added to address the tectonic stress that would undoubtedly occur by such a sudden and outer force-induced axis shift. Now, I know it's most likely everything but scientifically accurate, but I believe it's a nice feature nonetheless.

I initially wanted to use custom-drawn mountains all the way (also to avoid the clustering you get in the central massif) but my drawing skills simply were not up to the task. I've been able to modify most and expand some mountains slightly. Most exceptionally large mountains are largely hand-drawn. However, the majority uses brushes I found (I think) on DA, but I do no longer know from whom I downloaded them.

Soooo, seems I'm on a roll today, owed to a small tutorial by our illustrious Torstan which revealed the wonderful option of "brush opacity" to me. Don't laugh. To me Photoshop is so huge and varied in its functionalities that from time to time I discover things that have been staring me in the eye all along, things that solve problems and questions I couldn't get around earlier. Another big thanks goes out to Max for his help with pushing me in the right direction regarding oceans and texture layers.

So, hills have been placed and the locations for the hand-drawn craters have been marked.

Lookin fantastic wish you luck on this project!
By the way what are those 3 pointy "towers" at the bottom?
Good work so far

Thank you! Those towers are "atmospheric converters"; basically, they are the remaining core component of what used to be network of terraforming facilities, and one of the three is failing. I'm not terribly good at drawing custom structures at the moment, but I hope the final versions will look a bit better (I can't upload the map at full resolution due to the file restraints anyway).

Anyway, here's a bit of an update. You could say it's a prototype for the header of the map. Shield outline and the laurels are from Wyrmshadow's custom shape pack.

Okay, I've done most of the work on the craters (except for the shading) and I've started doing some work on forests.

And I need you guys' input. Should I have the forest run around the mountains' feet, allowing for a clean distinction, or should I have them grow up the slopes and use the mountains' shading to hint at the size of them? Personally, while I like the idea of forests growing on mountainsides (I mean, that's what they do after all^^) I think it'll look better if I draw them around their bases. What do you think?

I think the 2th one (with the growing around the base) is better. It gives me a more neutral feeling than the 1st one.
Also I like the more spiky forest for the round one in this case ^^
I'm curious how the map will be at the end ! Keep up the good work !

I think the 2th one (with the growing around the base) is better. It gives me a more neutral feeling than the 1st one.
Also I like the more spiky forest for the round one in this case ^^
I'm curious how the map will be at the end ! Keep up the good work !